


the death of a phoenix

by Blue_Rive



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Minor Character Death, Temporary Character Death, idk i just sat down to write and this came out, mechs fans making the first mate thing sad: ashes edition, poetic bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25754137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Rive/pseuds/Blue_Rive
Summary: You are Ashes O'Reilly, and you are twenty-three, and you are dying.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 60
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	the death of a phoenix

You are Ashes O’Reilly, and you are eleven years old, and you are alone and you are angry and you are rebellious and you have just set a fire. You know that if anyone’s willing to spend time on you they will reprimand you, call you a problem child, and then talk to you even less than before. You burn with a cold fire, and you are willing to turn everything around you to soot and dust until people start dancing to your tune. 

You are eleven years old, and someone acknowledges you, calls himself your uncle and implies he could be all the things that you never had- family high on that list. It’s nice to be wanted by someone. You take his hand. 

You are Ashes O’Reilly, and you are twenty-three, and the fire you call home and safety is licking up your heels and scorching your skin. You are twenty-three, and you are powerless and you are dying and you hate being powerless and you never want to die, never ever. You are so, so, young still, and you do not want to be killed because of someone else’s manipulations. You remember power, remember that thing you could wrest for yourself with a tinderbox and gasoline, and how it felt like immortality, and when the doc offers you agree. 

You are Ashes O’Reilly, and you are thirty-one but look as young as the day you burned to death and came back from the embers, and feel like you are so much younger, because you are back with a group of kids same as when you were eleven and you set the tablecloth on fire today and  _ she  _ just sighed and left, and if you walk near her lab you can hear Jonny screaming and if you stand next to a certain wall you can hear Nastya shuddering in the vents, like how some of the new kids in the orphanage used to cry themselves to sleep, and you are as powerless as when you started, and you are seventeen and burning down a building and you feel untouchable, and you are thirty-one and you are burning down a planet, and screaming you cause is so much better than screaming you cannot stop.

You are Ashes O’Reilly, and you are one thousand and fifty-six but still twenty-three, you will always be twenty-three, and you know Jonny killed Carmilla and are trying to prove it even though there isn’t a point and if you did it wouldn’t change shit because everyone wanted her dead, and he grins a devil’s smile and says “I’m captain now,” and reaches out a hand, and you do not take it and you tell him “First mate”. 

You are Ashes O’Reilly and you are ten thousand and two and people are finally doing what you want, an orchestra of story and you’re the conductor, and Orpheus and Oedipus and  Ariadne and Heracles all die at the end but that just makes for a good tale, and Ulysses dies and you can’t help but envy them because you are so, so, old now, and immortality isn’t half as good as you thought it would be when everything you knew had been burning away. 

You are eleven, and you are about to make a stupid mistake because you don’t know how to think before you trust, and you are five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand and you are unshakable, cold as steel and bright as a solar system engulfed in flame- and you are eleven and you have never been loved in your life, and you are a million and three hundred thousand eight hundred and ninety six and it is the heat death of the universe and you are dying, and you are ten and setting your first fire with a lighter you nicked off some teen who was showing off, and you are twenty-four looking younger and you have just set yourself alight and laughed with exhilaration when you did not die, and you are eleven and you take Mickey’s hand and you are twenty-three and you take Carmilla’s and you are one thousand and fifty-six and you do not take Jonny’s and you are ten thousand and two and Ulysses takes yours and you are a phoenix reborn millions of times and you are twenty-three and you are burning alive.

You are Ashes O’Reilly, and you will always be twenty-three.

**Author's Note:**

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